Now I have downloaded the latest Mandriva from a FTP site. This is a 64bit program. My computer is a 64 bit one. I ran into the following obstacle. So I need your help.

[I have downloaded from the Internet two programs which diagnose my hardware. One is called ‘Everest’ and the other one is PC Wizard 2005. They are Windows programs. My computer has Windows XP. So I could work with Windows. ]

This means those drivers are at my disposal. When I selected a driver, the following message appears.

Loading aha152x failed. Do you want to try again with other parameters?

• Yes

• No

I selected the first alternative ‘Yes’.
The following message appears.
You may now provide options to module aha152x.Options are in format “name=value name2=value2…” For instance, “ io=0x300 irq=7”

[ How do I know those parameters. What are they? I believe if you can find those parameters, it would work and I could install the Mandriva. How do I find those strange values. Your help is appreciated.]

I am eagely waiting for your comments and help.

Last edited by Gorky on Sun Nov 20, 2005 7:07 pm, edited 3 times in total.

It seems your motherboard has IDE and SATA controllers. Is your hard disk IDE or SATA?
If it's the former, I would have selected (8)alin 15X3 : Acer Laboratories Inc [Ali] | M 5229 IDE [STORAGE_IDE] and 1.ide-generic, from the above.
If it's a SATA drive then I suppose (9) is correct, but I'm not too sure about the kernel module.

This is, in effect, exactly the same problem you were having with SuSE. Just as a matter of interest, you haven't got RAID enabled have you? If you have, then it won't work. And if your hard disk is SATA, then you certainly don't want to turn it off in the BIOS, as then Windows won't boot either.

Looking around the internet I have found a number of other potential Linux users having trouble with this board, but no solutions.

Now I removed the SATA hard disk. It was a 160GB Maxtor one.
I bought a new Samsung 200GB hard disk and put it inside.
Afterwards, I installed Windows XP successfully. Now I must install Mandriva.
I will use 100GB for Windows and 100GB to Linux.

As my previous computer, I want this one to give me the choice of Windows or Linux when it starts up.

I want to install Mandriva on 50GB and SuSE on 50GB.

How many partitions are there when installing Mandriva. I know one is swap the other one is root.

Simplest setup will be to use one for swap, one for / (root) and one for /home. All your operating system files, programs, logs, system configuration and so on, will go under / while your personal files and personal configuration settings will found under /home/username (where username is the name you select for yourself during installation).
Make sure Mandriva does give you a /home partition, as it will allow you to retain your personal data untouched if you decide to update or change Linux versions.

Should be, though the partition will need to be deleted and then divided up. Have you solved your SATA problem then?

One other thing, having created the partition with Partition Magic, you might find that after Mandriva's partitioning tool has reconfigured your disk, that PM believes the disk partition table to be corrupt. This is because PM and Mandriva's partitioning tool have different ideas about how hard disks can be partitioned. This will only be a problem if you decide to repartition the disk again at a later date with PM. Should you wish to do so, it would be a better idea to create your three Linux partitions now with PM and then just assign the mount points and format them during the installation of Mandriva.
Unless you have unusual requirements 1GB for swap, 7GB for / and the rest for /home should be adequate.

Now I have created a 50MB of partition of 'ext2' file system and Installed Mandriva 2006 which I downloaded from a FTP site. I made this partition using the Partition Magic program. My Windows XP works; I have installed the Partition Magic on Windows XP.

I can remove it again or reinstall again. It just takes about 20 minutes. I could just use the Partition Magic and format that partition and remove it neatly. It is very simple.

There are a few problems. It didn't ask me about any swap partition. It seems that there is no swap partition. Usually the Partition Magic shows the swap partition. It is not there. On my old computer, I used the Partition Magic to see the partitions.

How do I check whether the swap partiton is there?

The next problem is that I can't go to the Internet. I talked to my ISP. In first place they don't support Linux. They support Bill Gates. However, the man I talk to knew some Linux. He asked me to use the ping command. It was not successful. The ' ifconfig' command didn't work either. I could see their DNS server's ip address. The connection was there. The browsers can't go to the Internet. I am hooked to the ISP; browsers can't go to the Internet. There is an icon to indicate that I am connected to the Internet.

They couldn't do anything. There is a problem with the network card. A friend of mine suggested buying a netword card and see the reaction from the system. The built in network card works fine for Windows XP.

I will struggle a few more hours and buy a network card and try again.

Could you please tell me how to check the existence of the swap file?

Mandriva works fine. The Open Office word processor works. I could work on the shell.
[ I could easily erase and reinstall whenever I want. I could maximize or minimize the partitions. The Windows XP installation takes hours whereas this Mandriva take about 20 minutes. The funny thing is that the ínstallation didn't mention about the swap partition.]

Please tell me how to check the existence of the swap file. I appreciate your comments and thoughts.

I tried to ping Google. It didn't work. I tried to ping BBC. It didn't work.
However, all those things work smoothly on Windows XP side.
[By the way, I am writing here using Windows XP side of the computer.]

I have disabled the builtin firewall and there is no proxy server.
Why can't I go to the Internet? Your thoughts are very welcome.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried to ping Google. Please read the following: